Financial Software Development: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

Software development teams at financial institutions are in a crunch: they are being pushed to deliver more code, faster and with fewer defects. This software brings huge value to banks and other financial transactional firms, and is often their key differentiator: you could say that banks have turned into software companies that happen to do finance. So, how can these development teams stay ahead? How can they deliver code faster and with fewer crash-causing defects? These were the question tackled recently by Dave West, VP and Research Director at Forrester Research and Kathy Burger, Editor at Bank Systems and Technology Magazine along with the Coverity team. The panel reviewed data from a soon to be released Forrester study highlighting development testing trends within the FSI industry. Key Findings:

Speed is Vital: We polled our webinar audience on their biggest challenge in development. An overwhelming 62% selected that time-to-market and the need to release products with shorter development cycles was their #1 issue. This speed of innovation requires iteration, leading to numerous rapid testing phases. It’s imperative to have a complete, automated testing solution in place to spot any potential defects in these early phases.

Technical Debt Looms Large: Our second place polling answer dealt with the burden of technical debt inherited from legacy systems. FSI can be described as the melting pot of software, with the large quantity of accumulated systems and software from years of mergers and acquisitions of smaller banks. The burden of trying to integrate these disparate systems while adding new functionality can weigh down development teams. Measurement of this technical debt is crucial to FSI development teams to help them assess and manage the quality of their code over time.

Embrace Continuous Integration: While Agile is the most-practiced form of development in FSI, adoption of Continuous Integration is still lagging behind other industries. CI is vital in optimizing development team’s production time, while creating an environment where code is constantly tested and any potential defects are found early. In this, a fully integrated development testing solution helps realize the full potential of an Agile CI model that brings the faster time-to-market that is so crucial to FSI companies.

If you missed the webinar, you can hear the now available on-demand recording of Development Testing and Banking IT: Achieving a New Era in Software Quality and see how development testing is helping address these findings.